"You'd much better not," he repeated.
"Is that a bargain?"
"Yes, if you like," he answered, looking at her with puzzled eyes. It was the first long conversation that they had had. After it, he was no nicer than before. He never kissed her, he never touched her, he seldom talked to her; when she talked, he seemed to be little interested. For hours he lay there, looking in front of him, saying nothing. When the little doctor came they wrangled and fought together but seemed to like one another.
Through it all Maggie could see that he was riddled with deep shame and self-contempt and haunted, always, by the thought of his father. She longed to speak to him about his father's death, but as yet she did not dare. If once she could persuade him that that had not been his fault, she could, she thought, really help him. That was the secret canker at his heart and she could not touch it.
Strangely, as the days passed, the years that had been added to him since their last meeting seemed to fall away. He became to her more and more the boy that he had been when she had known him before. In a thousand ways he showed it, his extraordinary youth and inexperience in spite of all that he had been and done. She felt older now than he and she loved him the more for that. Most of all she longed to get him away from this place where he was. Then one day little Abrams said to her:
"He'll never get well here."
"That's what I think," she said.
"Can't you carry him off somewhere? The country's the place for him—somewhere in the South."
Her heart leapt.
"Oh, Glebeshire!" she cried.